River City Ransom, both developed and published by Technos Japan, is a side scrolling beat'em up action RPG released for the NES in 1989. Like the game Double Dragon (1988), it is believed to be a spiritual sequel to the game Renegade (1986).
The objective of this game is that you play as one of River City High's students, Ryan (and Alex if in 2-player mode), attempting to save River City High and Ryan's girlfriend Cyndi from the villainies "Slick".
You do so by battling your way across the city from gang owned "turf to turf". You fight the gangs such as
"The Generic Dudes", "The Frat Guys", "The Jocks" and "The Squids". Now, I found this pretty funny because, for example, when i was facing the "Generic Guys", they all had very generic names (I know, imagine that). There are also safe zone areas through out the game where you can upgrade your characters stats and recover health.
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The only big difference is the amount of enemies on the screen
at once. And that is only because of the technological differences. |
Now at first I did not even know that this was an RPG type game at all. It was at a point in the game where I was like "how do you recover health in this game? Or are you just not suppose to take damage". I was also confused about the areas in the game where you just crossed without any action or violence. It was at one of those points that I noticed I could walk into a store or a resteraunt, and spend the money I was picking up off my fallen enemies. I was like "what the fu*k" no way. And after that the game became a lot more interesting to me. At first I though it was just another Double Dragon, because it basically had the same game play. You could move up, down, left, and right, you fight enemies, and you can use weapons from the enemies. One thing that I really enjoyed about this game though was how you can use your own enemies as weapons. While I was playing, I tried picking up a stick or bat like weapon, and instead picked up an enemy that I already knocked down. This was pretty comical if you ask me. The best part was, not to long after that, I was playing the Scott Pilgrim vs the World Xbox arcade game and It was like the exact same thing as River City Ransom. It was a side scrolled beat'em up, where you can pick up weapons, use your enemies as weapons, and find stores where you can buy health restores and upgrades from money recovered from fallen enemies. There are even bosses and sub-bosses like in River City Ransom. I wonder where those developers found their inspiration. Like, I am a big fan of Scott Pilgrim, but you can only play so much of a beat'em up before you really start to see the repetitiveness of the beat'em up genre.
The difference between this and other beat'um games of that era (besides the RPG half)
is that However, the characters' effectiveness in battle is determined by several statistics, and their knowledge of fighting techniques. These techniques include the games techniques such as Grand Slam, Stone Hands, and Dragon Feet, which are purchased as books in shops throughout the city (just like the movies and comics in the Scott pilgrim game) using funds recovered from defeated gang members.
So it is obvious that games like this made an impact on current games like Scott Pilgrim vs the World and Finale Fantasy, but the game to me is not that interesting. I like the concept of it, but to me the story line was just a little dull. I mean there is nothing special about saving you "world" from a villain or rescuing your love interest. Besides that though I did like the other parts of the game (like using your enemies as giant hammer like enemies). And, let me add (again) how much this game is like that Scott Pilgrim game... tisk tisk developers of Scott Pilgrim the game, where is your creativity.
References:
http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=GameMuseum.Detail&id=308
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